Influences on Human Behavior: Three Stories

or that is it a lot more related to reality or is it much maid out of the very imaginative creations of their author? Truly, the reality or the fantasy content of the three stories somehow made distinctions amongst them.

This simply means that they have different degree of the reality content or the reality-related information given by the author. The first story talks very much about the angel, which is not that realistic if we’re consulting the scientific community. Another thing that adds to the fantastic feature of the story is the spider woman, who became spider because of the strike of lightning. That makes it a lot more related to fantasy than the reality. The poem that talks about the bird is certainly realistic, there are many uses of figurative languages but that also are realistic.

The third story is the one that is difficult to categorize. The setting, as said earlier, is 2081, and we are not certain if that might happen on that year. The author claims many hypothetical statements which I think is not just from his imagination, I think they are intelligent guess of what might happen in the years following the present. The setting and the reality of the stories would somehow predict the behavior of characters in the story and their role in the development of the plot. The setting of the story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, supports the way the characters react on seeing the angel.

Since they are on an underdeveloped, in terms of knowledge and technology, society, upon seeing the angel, they gain curiosity and then ask some

persons that they think would know something about what they found out. The role of religion here is important. The way people of the village treat the old man is based on how well are them in their religion. And obviously, the lack of sufficient understanding and analysis of the world made them straight-forward thinkers and non-open-minded people that they readily believed on what other will tell them.

This is or might be related to the third story, the “Harrison Bergeron” in a way that people also becomes puppet of the one that tells that what should or what must be heard or done. This very strong item that also represses their will and abilities is the law. Because of the ambition of having equal rights and opportunity for everybody, they had created such laws or amendments that cause other disadvantages. The sense of equality however, is violated in the poem or the second prose. There are distinctions made about the will and the opportunities given to the bird outside the cage and the one that is caged.

I think the common thread that these three stories have is concern with the concept of captivity. Captivity is described and is analyzed in different ways as affected by the social factors. The first story highlighted the captivity of a fallen old man which is an angel and tells how he was used to earn money, but in the end he escapes and flies away. He was captivated not only literally but by the beliefs of the people which are influenced by the setting of the story. The unrealistic parts added to the story make

it easy for the author to play with his characters on how they will act or make decisions.

The second one or the poem, is implicitly highlighted the issue. I think the author would like us to make comparisons with humans, the one that is on the cage and the other which is free. The cage limits opportunities but still is not a big hindrance in exhausting all possible means of having a “part” in this world. The third story talks about captivity literally and figuratively. In this story, Harrison is captivated because of the conflict with what the author stated as a “rule”, that is everybody must be equal. Since Harrison has violated what the author imposed in the beginning, then probably he will end up in jail.

Looking at a deeper sense, Harrison is a victim or a slave of a much wider scope which concerns the repression of self expression and uniqueness. Since it is imposed that everybody is equal, the characters of the story acts much like as robots with no feelings and no wills. And much like the caged bird of the second story, someone in the person of Harrison would probably want the freedom. How the authors play the characters of their story is really dependent on the conditions they had imposed at the beginning. Overall, they are really good at it.